Crossword 23:29
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Impressive puzzle construction today. left/right symmetry instead of the traditional diagonal, including a stack of four 15-letter answers at the top of the grid that hold together pretty well without getting too obscure on the down clues. A worthy diversion.

This weekend is packed. I have Rivals of Ixalan prerelease tomorrow morning-afternoon, Unstable/Cube that evening and a second viewing of Star Wars Sunday, not to mention Friday Night Magic tonight. Drafts on Fridays before the prerelease sometimes have trouble firing. Some people don't like Ixalan draft. I like it a lot. I suppose that's because I've gotten pretty good at it. Merfolk seem to murder everyone, and from what I've seen so far, that trend is going to continue in Rivals. Fewer chances at Shaper of Nature, but other great uncommons make up for it. Red seems pretty good too, and I'm fine drafting Pirates if they're there. I prefer Rakdos or Izzet to Dimir, since red seems to have what you want more often.

So, anyway.

I received a Super NES Classic for Christmas, which contains Final Fantasy III (This was released as Final Fantasy VI in Japan, in case you were wondering why the first 32-bit Final Fantasy was VII), and my brother tried to win the game in a week. He would have, too, except that he, like me, has a hard time actually finishing until he's done everything, and Final Fantasy always has a lot of everything. Aside from endless fights at the Coliseum, he just couldn't bring himself to spend the time to break the curse on the Cursed Shield to transform it into the Paladin's Shield. (It requires fighting 256 battles with the Cursed Shield equipped, and that is an epic grind, especially since you can't get the shield until you get Locke, and you usually don't go for Locke too early, since his cave can be pretty gnarly. In my next playthrough, I might go for early Locke. Getting Phoenix and Ragnarok early certainly is appealing.)

I still have my brother's saved file, so I can go finish it if I want, but even before Christmas, I had invested a lot of time into Final Fantasy VI Advance. Final Fantasy VI had already been re-released along with the never-released-in-America Final Fantasy V (also for SNES) as a compilation for Playstation called Final Fantasy Anthologies. But the games were straight ports, not remakes. Even the glitches were still present. They merely added a FMV at the top like a trailer for the game. For the Game Boy Advance version, however, SquareEnix did a lot (these things were also done for the iOS/Android/PC releases). Aside from glitch-fixes. the translation is new. While Japanese Final Fantasy games universally used Gil as the currency, and Cure-Cura-Curaga spell levels, American versions of Final Fantasy did not. Because of the way the Japanese alphabet works, they could fit more with fewer characters. But in America, everything got truncated down to 6 letters (the massive fire spell "Merton" has always supposed to be "Meltdown"). This has all been rectified. Also, the Japanese names for Espers, ninja weapons and katanas are restored. Shadow is now seeking the Ichigeki, not the "Striker." The opera has meter and rhyme that fits the music. And they added a lot more everything for completion junkies.

Four new Espers were added. One is Leviathan, which you can find riding the Nikeah-South Figaro ferry in the World of Ruin (as this battle takes place in water, this is also an opportunity for Mog to learn the Water Harmony Dance, which is a royal pain to do otherwise. (This battle is comical if you equip a Reed Cloak.)). It teaches the brand new spell Flood. Another is Giant Cactuar, which you find in the Cactuar Desert and shows up after you've killed a bunch of Cactuars. It doesn't teach anything you can't learn elsewhere, but it offers a speed bonus at level up. Odin was the only Esper that did this before, but you mostly wanted to change him into Raidan ASAP, so min/maxing was difficult, if that's your fetish. Then there's Gilgamesh. To find him, you have to obtain the Excalipoor at the Auction House (it'll cost you 500,000 Gil) and then wager it at the Coliseum. After a really easy battle for a Merit Award (nice), Gilgamesh shows up and challenges you (your whole party). He teaches the spell Quick and another spell called Valor, which triples the next physical attack damage for the whole party. I've never used it. The fourth is Diabolos, which you can find at the end of a whole new bonus dungeon called Dragons' Den. Dragons' Den is accessible after defeating the 8 Legendary Dragons. I features a 3-party maze-like dungeon, which feature souped-up versions of the Legendary Dragons and the boss, Kaiser Dragon. Diabolos teaches boring gravity magic, but offers a 100% bonus to HP at level up. That seems great, but considering you ought to be around level 60 to attempt Dragons' Den, you don't have much further to go... Except for Soul Shrine, another super-challenging gauntlet only available upon completing the game and the Dragons' Den. You can get some really great and powerful items there... Although it really is the final challenge. You shouldn't need them.

So, write a little every day